I love Aretha [Franklin] and I've loved her all my life. I think she's an incredible songstress, obviously. She consistently has had this incredible voice. I remember when she was singing gospel in her father's church.

Sometimes we listen to too many commentators about things that don't affect their lives because they're in a different tax bracket. Or to the so-called clergymen giving their interpretation of God's word, and yet they're not rolling the same way in their own lives.

When I wrote the words and I have the music, I felt, wow, you know, this has got to be right. I got to sing it right.

I feel thankful to God, first and foremost, allowing me to enjoy this 'smell the roses' kind of thing.

I remember the beginnings of the Kurzweil reading machine. I was one of the first to meet Ray Kurzweil and purchase the reading machine in Boston. To think that the machine was at least two and a half large suitcases at the time, and now you have a camera and it takes a picture and you have sound.

The truth is that we have to, as American citizens, stop thinking that this life that we're living, the things that we're dealing with, is some reality TV show. This is real life, real children, real situations.

I'm living a life. I have nine children.